Not the World Cup...not even close

American sports fans seem to be about the big game. The championship game for any sport usually draws the most viewers because fans want to know which team is the best at every sport. In the U.S., none is bigger than the NFL Super Bowl, which draws millions of viewers and many more millions of dollars for the network that airs the ad space. People are already talking about their team's chances to win a ring at a sporting event that's months away. The NBA Finals, MLB World Series, and NHL Stanley Cup all garner a similar type of attention from sports fans, and a similar increase in ratings.

The world's most popular sport, soccer, has the World Cup, but only comes around every four years. The FIFA World Cup champion gives the winning country the right to say, "My country could beat up your country...in soccer," or football, as it called in most other countries. The Italian team won the last World Cup in 2006, but that game will always be synonymous with Zinedine Zidane's headbutt.

In the U.S., we have Major League Soccer (MLS), which features this country's best soccer talent and a few top players from around the world. Martin Rogers of Yahoo! Sports ranks the MLS as the top world league for the future, and says it can be largely successful in the next decade. Despite hope from supporters, the MLS still has not fully caught on with American sports fans. This is highlighted by the lack of buzz around the MLS Cup Finals, which kicks off November 18th at Noon EST. I would consider myself a soccer fan, but I had no idea the MLS playoffs had already started. The league isn't even trying to put the game on primetime to reach the most viewers. People on the West Coast have to wake up at 9 AM on Sunday just to watch the game.

Almost every American has played soccer or at least watched their kid play it, but few people seem interested in the MLS Cup. Even if someone has heard of the two teams in the finals (New England Revolution and Houston Dynamo), it's unlikely that person could name any player on either team. Maybe the lack of hype is because the game is simply a rematch of last year's MLS Cup Finals, which the Dynamo won. If Major League Soccer's biggest star, British import David Beckham, was playing, there would probably be a lot more interest in the game. He is so popular that ESPN has Beckham Watch on it's soccer homepage. According to a soccer blog, Beckham has increased the popularity of the league for fans, and attendance is up to the highest it has been since its inaugural season.

But without Beckham in the MLS Cup, there is much less media coverage of the game. Sports anchor Dan Patrick says most of the people who watch soccer in the United States are actually illegal immigrants from countries where soccer is very popular. If that's the case, then maybe people will tune in this Sunday to watch the game...even if they aren't American.

Inspiration for my blog came from this Sports Illustrated story.